Xbox Builds a Film Arm, a GTA 6 Leaker's Crypto Ultimatum, and the Americas Take Three of VALORANT's Final Four

Industry

• Xbox is folding its film, merchandise and live-event businesses into a new division called XP. Kayleen Walters, who has run Mojang for eight years and executive-produced A Minecraft Movie, will lead it, with Maria Angelidou-Smith — most recently Reddit's chief product officer — taking over Mojang; both report to Xbox chief Asha Sharma. XP inherits the Minecraft Squared sequel, the Fallout and Call of Duty adaptations, the Diablo animated series, Hideo Kojima's Physint and live events including BlizzCon. Read more →
• European regulators opened a coordinated action against ten games companies over how they sell in-game currency. Italy's Competition Authority is leading the case against Activision Blizzard, Mojang, Ubisoft, Riot Games, Crytek, Supercell, InnoGames, King, Plarium and Playrix, over bundle pricing that leaves balances unspendable, dark patterns and weak parental controls. Epic pre-empted the complaint by letting Fortnite players spend exact V-Bucks amounts from this month, except on PlayStation. Read more →
• Double Fine's union petition was withdrawn two weeks after it was filed, and all eight organisers were later laid off. A majority of eligible staff petitioned the National Labor Relations Board in May; Microsoft then cut the studio loose from first-party, and 23 people lost their jobs shortly afterwards. Founder Tim Schafer told Kotaku he is "pro-union" and that the industry "crunches people, burns them out, then lays them off". Read more →
• Gears of War: E-Day sold an estimated 230,000 copies in its first week, while 1.7 million people played it through Game Pass. Alinea Analytics puts 168,000 of those sales on Steam and about $37 million of revenue so far, $26 million of it on Xbox; its analyst argues the service charges the platform's most committed players the least. Read more →
• The GTA 6 leaker has put a price on the whole game: a $30 million valuation for his meme coin. Cyberleek, quiet since August, posted on October 10 that a $30 million market cap would release the full build "played to the end, credits and all", and named disc-based PlayStation and Xbox releases plus a public apology as Take-Two's only way out. Read more →

Releases and updates

• Battlefield 6 and a run of day-one indies make up Game Pass's first October wave. EA's shooter joins the service on October 13, with Forever Ago already live from October 8 and Valor Mortis, Deep Dish Dungeon, Chained Beasts and Beyond These Stars following through October 16. Read more →
• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 opens its campaign early on October 16, a week before a global launch on October 23. Pre-orders unlock the early access window, and Xbox describes the game as bringing "long-running storylines to a powerful and emotional breaking point". The same stretch of releases brings Castlevania: Belmont's Curse, Planet Zoo 2 and Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun 2. Read more →
• The Witcher 3 Remastered's Patch 5.01 finally gives console players a bloom toggle. The update — about 5.5 GB on console and 8.5 GB on PC — adds Light Shafts and Depth of Field controls, fixes a PS5 bug that kept resetting custom settings, and cures the console bug that made dialogue far quieter than the rest of the mix. Read more →
• EA is remastering Wing Commander 3 from master tapes recovered from its own archive. Producer Jim Vessella announced the 30th-anniversary release at the Portland Retro Gaming Expo, saying the restored footage will run at 60 FPS with community improvements and that the package will include the Kilrathi Saga trilogy. Read more →
• Amanita Design announced Machinarium 2, seventeen years after the original. The teaser puts Josef and Berta in the Barrens, home to two robot tribes running out of power, and has players switching between the two characters to solve wordless puzzles. No release date has been given, and the game is up on Steam to wishlist. Read more →

Esports

• The Americas are guaranteed a place in the VALORANT Champions 2026 grand final. LOUD, G2 Esports and 100 Thieves are three of the last four teams in Shanghai, with Team Vitality the only side left from outside the region; 100 Thieves knocked out defending champions NRG 2–0 on October 11, a day after LOUD had beaten NRG 2–1. LOUD meet Vitality on October 16, and the grand final is October 18. Read more →
• Vitality swept MOUZ 3–0 in Katowice to win a fourth ESL Pro League title. The Counter-Strike 2 grand final finished 13–8 on Cache, 13–7 on Inferno and 16–12 on Dust2 after Vitality forced overtime, and ZywOo took MVP with a 1.44 rating across 16 maps — his sixth of 2026. Read more →
• LOS beat FURIA 3–2 to take the CBLOL 2026 Split 2 title and Brazil's first seed at Worlds. The win sends LOS straight into the Worlds Swiss Stage on October 23, while FURIA must start in the Play-In on October 15; jungler Curse was named grand final MVP after playing five different champions across the series. Read more →
• The Worlds 2026 Play-In draw set FURIA against MVK Esports and Cloud9 against Karmine Corp. The four teams play a double-elimination, best-of-five bracket in Los Angeles from October 15 to 18 for a single place in the Swiss Stage, and the 19-team tournament ends with the grand final in Brooklyn on November 14. Read more →
• Kim "Deft" Hyuk-kyu is reportedly returning to the LCK with Nongshim RedForce. The 2022 world champion has been away two years on South Korea's mandatory military service, and the report from LEC Wooloo has him replacing Nam "Diable" Dae-geun, the young AD carry Nongshim signed this year. Nongshim missed the LCK 2026 playoffs altogether. Read more →